Lord Mandelson: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ‘too close’ to Murdoch

Former Labour Cabinet minister Lord Mandelson has conceded to the Leveson Inquiry that former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were ‘closer than was wise’ to News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch.

Lord Mandelson arrives at the High Court in London (Picture: PA)

Lord Mandelson said excessive personal contact between the Labour leadership and the media baron had led to ‘adverse’ comments about their relationship.

But he denied a ‘Faustian’ pact existed between New Labour and Mr Murdoch’s press empire.

‘As far as the Labour Party is concerned, I do not believe, generally speaking, that the public interest was subordinated to the party’s interests in seeking good relations with News International,’ the former business secretary said in his written evidence to the inquiry into the ethics of the press.

‘I reject the view that, under either Mr Blair or Mr Brown, some sort of Faustian pact was forged between the government and Rupert Murdoch involving commercial concessions to him in return for support from his newspapers.’

Lord Mandelson said Mr Blair had sought to heal the ‘famously bad relationship’ between Labour and News International titles in 1980s and 1990s.

‘What we all wanted to do in the 1990s, should we ever have any hope of winning a general election again – and by that time we had lost three or four – we didn’t want to make permanent enemies of News International,’ he said.

But he added: ‘It did not mean that we were prepared to make concessions to his commercial interests that might enable us to curry favour and draw him over the line in supporting us.’

Tessa Jowell provided emotional evidence to the inquiry (Picture: PA)

Appearing before the inquiry earlier in the day former Labour culture secretary Tessa Jowell said she had received assurances from Mr Blair when she took the job in June 2001 that there was no deal on media regulation with Mr Murdoch.

Ms Jowell also spoke of the way in which her life was made unbearable by what later emerged was a result of phone hacking; a fact that led to her being awarded £200,000 in compensation from News International.

She said she spent years of her life checking cars for journalists as links emerged between her estranged husband David Mills and then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

‘At that time my family had been destroyed,’ she told the inquiry.

‘I did my job every day but life was very, very difficult.’

Ms Jowell continued: ‘I was shocked by what I’d heard but at the same time it answered a lot of questions I had about why I was followed everywhere, how people seemed to know where I was going.

‘It did provide an explanation but at the same time the invasion of my privacy was total during that period.’